Jennings-Smith: Big drop in gang killings

Glenda Jennings-Smith.

The number of gang-related killings has virtually halved during this Government’s tenure so far, from 33 percent out of the total number of killings in 2015, to just 18 percent of this year’s total number of murders, Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of National Security Glenda Jennings-Smith said during the budget debate on Tuesday.

Recalling an offender who had turned his life around to follow the Lord, Jennings-Smith said Government needs help to make social interventions and save people from a life of crime. On the economy, she called on citizens to learn to cut and contrive, to survive the current squeeze.

Jennings-Smith recalled that as a schoolgirl in a struggling family, from one year to another, she would turn her uniform skirt inside out so as expose fresh fabric and craft an apparently new garment. Refuting the critics of the Government, Jennings-Smith said the population is wiser, saying, “People know what is going on.”

She said people were ready to make sacrifices and hailing Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley for bringing economic equity to the country by having everybody pay to shoulder a share of the economic burden. “If there’s one time your country needs you it is now,” she said.